PLAINFIELD TWP., MI - A combative meeting between Plainfield Township residents and their elected officials Monday night was marked by a particularly tense exchange around a single question: is the township's water safe to drink?

"Can you guarantee to my son, to the schools, to everybody here, that the water is safe?" resident Bill Mitchell asked the township's supervisor, Bob Homan, and the superintendent, Cameron Van Wyngarden.

"No one's going to answer a question like that," Homan said after reaching for his water glass behind the dais. "If it were distilled water, I could probably do that. ...I drink it, my family drinks it, my kids drink it."

Homan and Van Wyngarden said the township's water meets the federal safe drinking water standards.

Mitchell was among a number of concerned residents that packed the township board's Monday night meeting with questions about the township's water over an emerging contaminant that's become a growing local concern this fall: PFOS.

Township officials threw aside the typical rules that govern public comment at their board meeting Monday night, as they imposed no time limits on the speakers, allowed some people to speak twice and answered questions as people asked them.

The latest test of the township's water in September showed a combined level of types of PFAS -- PFOS and PFOA -- at 10 parts per trillion (ppt). The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's health advisory for PFAS is 70 ppt.

In the past several months the issue has reignited in Plainfield Township due to a mushrooming investigation into tannery waste dump sites from Wolverine World Wide that have contaminated some private drinking water wells.

The township is in the midst of engineering an extension of its drinking water system to neighborhoods impacted by the Wolverine dump sites.

Waste Management, which now owns the closed State Disposal Landfill that contaminated the township's water wells, should pay for the new well field the township is trying to build, Van Essen said.

Wolverine should pay for the township's drinking water system extension - and possibly the new well field as well, Van Essen said.

Travis Brown, a township resident, chemist and one of the founders of a new citizens group, Demand Action, called on officials to test for 90 contaminants that the EPA regulates with EPA oversight.

"We need immediate help from a neighboring water source," Brown said. "These people in this room are more than customers. They are mothers, fathers, families with children. Look around. Everyone who is here is concerned. This is real."

Brown said his group has started its own cancer and disease survey in the community. He encouraged the residents in attendance to educate themselves about what is safe and to use public information.

Van Wyngarden disputed the figures Brown included in his public comments, calling them outdated.

"It's time for Mr. Brown to take some acceptance for the facts as they are, not as he wants them to be," Van Wyngarden said.

For most of the residents in attendance, they shared their struggle with knowing how to respond to low levels of toxic poison in their water.

"I lost my wife this last year to cancer and I can't say confidently that it's not because of the PFAS in the water," said Robert Bennett, who lives near the Boulder Creek Golf Course. "Where do I go from here?"

Resident Jonathan Wright said the township needs to consider a careful plan of action - and to understand that the water may not be so poisonous now that people drop dead immediately from drinking it, but that it could kill some in the community in 20 years.

"The idea that we're hitting these mandatory minimums - we have to do better," Wright said to applause from those at the meeting.

Van Wyngarden agreed.

"We're striving for better," Van Wyngarden said, explaining that the township wants to lower the PFAS in its water to the lowest level possible.

Residents need to educate themselves about the relative risks to the water and choose what's right for them, Van Wyngarden said.

"I think it's a personal comfort level," Van Wyngarden said. "I'm comfortable with the water, with the information I've been given, that it's safe for my children to drink."

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